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Intro to Undergrad Resarch: NSF S-STEM Cohort
Utah Valley University
This course section is entirely online. All assignments, quizzes, and exams will be turned in and taken on Canvas. My preferred contact method is our group Slack channel.
This webpage will host links to all resources and videos, and serves as a roadmap for the semester, listing readings, assignments, etc.
Course overview:
Quick links:
Course Syllabus
Table of Contents
Week 1 | Week 5 | Week 9 | Week 13
Week 2 | Week 6 | Week 10 | Week 14
Week 1 - Getting to know the program and mentors
Topics:
- Biology research mentors’ presentations
- Getting to know your cohort
- Logistics and expectations of S-STEM program
Assignments:
- Watch all mentor introduction videos link
- Group discussion and Q/A session online
- Turn in your ranked mentor choice form
- Read this short paper for discussion
Resources
- About the S-STEM Program from NSF slide
- About UVU’s Biology S-STEM Program Excerpts from proposal
- Previous cohort’s research proposal posters
Week 2 - What makes for good mentorship
Topics:
- Expectations for advisors and advisees
- What to look for in an advisor
Assignments:
- begin lab rotations (2 weeks per lab, 5 labs)
- it’s up to you to make the most of your time with each research mentor
- stay in touch
Resources
- Choosing a lab document
- Advice from the NIH link
- Advice from the AHA link
- Advice from grad students link
- Things your mentor wants you to know link
- The importance of peer-mentoring
Week 3 - effective time management
Topics:
- Fitting research into academics
- Work-life balance
- Mental health
- Imposter syndrome and other cognitive snags
Assignments:
- Create a time budget that makes room for classes, work, family, research, and staring into the existential void
- Take care of yourself
- Keep in touch with your lab rotation activities and email your next mentor
Resources
- Advice from “undergrad in the lab” about time management: link 1 | link 2 | link 3
- Undergrad research and mental health
- Talking about mental health during grad school
- Imposter syndrome and how to fight it
- Dunning-Kruger effect explained
- Excellent piece on imposter syndrome from Josh Schimel
Week 4 - issues facing underrepresented scholars
Topics:
- Racial, gender, and sexual-orientation biases
- Finding and fixing our own biases
- How to be part of the solution
- Discussion with Jazmine Benjamin (PhD student at U Alabama, Birmingham)
Assignments:
- Read all of the pieces below in the resources section (video is optional if you’re time-crunched, but it’s interesting)
- Group video chat
- Turn in a reflection piece on your place within these issues
- Don’t forget about your research duties; Ask your mentor useful questions to see if the lab is a good fit.
Resources
- Hal’s Story
- Female perspectives in STEM
- On “being black in nature” part 1 part 2 part 3
- Neil DeGrasse Tyson on being black in science
- “STEMing while black” panel discussion video
Week 5 - applying for funding
Topics:
- Internal funding opportunities at UVU
- Application processes
Assignments:
- Check out the resources below
- Identify a funding source you’d like to try for and make a timeline for applying
Resources
- SAC, URSCA, and TEELS awards
- BOTS award
- CRFS award
- Rough grant deadline spreadsheet
- Funded SAC example
Week 6 - how to read a scientific paper
Topics:
- Research reports / reviews / editorials
- Following the backwards citation trail
- Critical evaluation
Assignments:
- Find the following paper in full:
Walker, R. S., Gurven, M., Burger, O., & Hamilton, M. J. (2008). The trade-off between number and size of offspring in humans and other primates. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 275(1636), 827–834.
- Follow a citation trail backwards for at least 5 statements you found interesting in the paper
- Compile a document with the bibliographies of the previous works and the quoted relevant sections
Resources
- Your best friend for finding papers: google scholar
- An illegal way to get papers you don’t have access to is SciHub (I would never advocate this behavior though)
- Types of scholarly publications
- Don’t forget about pre-prints
Week 7 - how to find gaps in knowledge
Topics:
- Using the library
- Literature reviews
- Managing references with Zotero
Assignments:
- Download Zotero
- Use it to collect 20 peer-reviewed articles on a topic of your choice
- Create a bibliography in the format required by the journal “Nature”
Resources
- Your UVU librarian
- Intro to library video series (arrow button to keep going is hidden at the top-right)-
- Zotero quick-start guide
- Be sure to take advantage of the life-saving add-on features
Week 8 - experimental design
Topics:
- Principles and types
- Qualitative, quantitative, how we “know”
- Observational vs manipulated
- Inductive and deductive reasoning
Assignments:
- Bring your research ideas to group discussions
- Go through the resources below well enough to follow a discussion as we design experiments together
Resources
- Short primer on designs
- Much longer, but much more thorough, intro to design
- Inductive vs deductive reasoning
Week 9 - realities of research
Topics:
- Keeping a lab notebook
- Reproducibility
- Adapting to inevitable failure
Assignments:
- Read this short paper
Resources
- Lab notebook rules
- What is reproducible research?
- The why and how of making science reproducible
- Failure is the most common part of science article
- Paper on the value of failure in science
- Here’s a perfect example of making research fully-open and reproducible (check out the “code” buttons, showing exactly how each analysis was done!)
- Shameless plug for another class I teach: Data Analysis for Biologists
